During the Lindenberg Aerosol Characterization Experiment (LACE 98) simultaneous measurements with ground-based and airborne lidars and with two aircraft equipped with aerosol in situ instrumentation were performed. From the lidar measurements, particle backscatter coefficients at up to eight wavelengths between 320 and 1064 nm and particle extinction coefficients at 2--3 wavelengths between 292 and 532 nm were determined. Thus, for the first time, an extensive set of optical particle properties from several lidar platforms was available for the inversion into particle microphysical quantities. For this purpose, two different inversion algorithms were used, which provide particle effective radius, volume, surface-area, and number concentrations, and complex refractive index. The single-scattering albedo follows from Mie-scattering calculations. The parameters were compared to the ones from airborne measurements of particle size distributions and absorption coefficients. Two measurement cases were selected. During the night of 9--10 August 1998 measurements were taken in a biomass-burning aerosol layer in the free troposphere, which was characterized by a particle optical depth of about 0.1 at 550 nm. Excellent agreement between remote-sensing and in situ measurements was found. In the center of this plume the effective radius was approximately 0.25 ¿m, and all methods showed rather high complex refractive indices, ranging from 1.56--1.66 in real part and from 0.05--0.07i in imaginary part. The single-scattering albedo showed low values from 0.78--0.83 at 532 nm. The second case, taken on 11 August 1998, presents the typical conditions of a polluted boundary layer in central Europe. Optical depth was 0.35 at 550 nm, and particle effective radii were 0.1--0.2 ¿m. In contrast to the first case, imaginary parts of the refractive index were below 0.03i. Accordingly, the single-scattering albedo ranged from 0.87--0.95.